


Wildflowers

by Charlie9646



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hopeful, Kissing, Mourning, Post-War, Same Age, Tattoos, Time Travel, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vague mentions of past Wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28635078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: Sirius Black was dropped from the veil straight onto the kitchen floor of an adult Luna Lovegood. Months after he decides maybe the future isn’t so bad after all.Sometimes you have to make a go of it; even if it fills your stomach with butterflies.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Luna Lovegood
Comments: 30
Kudos: 33
Collections: Magic Begins From Within - A Dumbledore's Armada Flash Fest Challenge





	Wildflowers

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Magic_Begins_From_Within](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Magic_Begins_From_Within) collection. 



> Thank you to my beta meditationsinemergencies and your willingness to fall down these rabbit of holes of rare pairs with me. And Zorak23 for one of our conversations that led to this.😀
> 
> My prompt was “eat dessert first.”

Sirius was alive. It was such an odd thing, one moment he was falling through the veil, and then the next he was falling to the floor of Luna’s home. It had been an accident on her part, a spell went wrong, not unlike the one that had long ago killed Pandora, her mother. It had been an accident on Luna’s part, but she had been happy to see him. She threw her arms around him like she hadn’t seen him in decades. For a moment he had assumed that she was Pandora, but the tattoos that covered her arms gave her away. The Luna Lovegood he had known was a child, barely even a teenager, and yet before him was a grown woman. A beautiful one at that who seemed to care for him much. 

Sirius did not know how he was supposed to feel. He did not belong here and yet here he was. He was drawn to this woman. It had been a peculiar feeling to know that twenty years had passed during the time that he had been gone and yet not a day for him. The unspeakables wanted to send him back through the veil, but they hadn’t figured out how to do that.

He looked out at the waves as they crashed against the shore; the sound of it filling his ears. His hair got caught in the wind, twisting and tangling around him, shoving his hands deeper in the pockets of his coat, he turned his face to the sky. A part of him wished that he could trade whatever this was for a single day with his friends. But life and fate didn’t work like that even if you had been given a second chance. Magic wasn’t about clicking your heels and saying you wanted to go home; even it had rules you had to follow. 

“You should come inside, Sirius,” Luna said behind him, he hadn’t even heard her come up, he had been lost in his thoughts. “It’s far too cold out here.”

“I like the cold,” he retorted, though it didn’t have much bite. 

“Sure you do, that’s why you are shivering like a niffler who has stolen something special.”

“I thought you were going into work today?” Sirius asked, ignoring her statement. 

“Change of plans. Bureaucracy at its best,” she sighed, stepping closer to him, her elbow brushing against his side. It sent a shiver up his spine. “It’s a long story, and I would rather not talk about it. However, I do need some help in the kitchen, if you don’t mind that is?” 

He watched the seagulls overhead, “I am not much of a cook…” 

“I am asking for your company, not your cooking skills. You have too many wackspurts to help with baking. Now, come. It’s time we got out of the cold.”

Sirius knew his insistence that he was okay was only going to fall on deaf ears. Sometimes, it was easier to just go along with something when you knew the other person was right. It had been a hard lesson learned when it came to Luna some considered her to have her head in the clouds, but that wasn’t the case. She was quick-witted, sharp-tongued, curious, and downright  pragmatic at times. She simply did not say things in the straightforward ways that you expected people to. She did not believe in wackspurts anymore than he did, but long ago she had been a child who watched her mother die and Luna had found a way to cope with it. Even if the rest of the world was unwilling to understand it, together they walked over the pale dunes and back to the cottage which he had started to consider his home in the months that had passed during his time here. 

They reached the back door quickly, and he opened it without a thought. Luna’s home was a bit eclectic. There were house plants in the corners, their green leaves splaying out and down onto the floor, scuffed oak wood floors, white lace curtains to let in the light, and the furniture had seen better days decades ago. But there was safety in this place; a comfort of things that had been around long ago so surely they would be there tomorrow. Merry, Luna’s tortoiseshell cat leapt off a kitchen counter and rubbed herself against his leg. 

“Fine,” Sirius muttered, reaching down to scratch the cat under her chin.

“Don’t lie,” Luna teased. “You like her.”

“Do not!” He shot back.

“Yes, you do. People don’t pet things they hate for a minute.” 

Luna took off her coat and hung it on a hook by the door, her shirt rising as she did so. Sirius couldn’t help but stare at the bits of her skin shown off when she did. He wanted to trace the rose tattoo on her hip with his fingers, a dolphin on her left forearm, and a niffler on her shoulder. Each of them surely had a story for why she had gotten it and he desperately wanted to learn each of them. He had only gotten his to upset his mother with her traditionalist nature. Good wizards and witches didn’t get tattoos, besides that one that was unspeakable. The one that had sealed Regulus’ fate, but also in a way Sirius’ own, even if he did not wear the dark mark on his skin. 

Sirius straightened himself up and averted his eyes. “I prefer dogs.” 

“That’s only because you can turn yourself into one,” Luna said, wrinkling her nose as she did so. “Snuffles.”

“You know I don’t like that name,” he grumbled, reaching for her. 

She darted further into the kitchen and out of his grasp, “But it suits you so well.”

Sirius laughed, the sound even odd to his ears. He stalked over her and pulled Luna close his thumbs hooking into the belt loops of Luna’s denims. He pulled her close, leaned down, and growled into her ear, “You know what suits you better than baking?”

“What?” Luna asked, grabbing onto his shirt as she did. “What suits me so much better?” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip and her hair fell around her shoulders. “Cat got your tongue?” She teased, reaching up to press her thumb into his lip. 

Sirius wanted to make a snarky comment, but nothing came out. This might not have been the life he had planned. But that was gone, the life he thought he should have had. Everything was different now, yet it was beautiful.

Luna was perfect in her way; she was like a wildflower. The kind that grew wild and no matter what you did to them would only come back stronger. She was odd but in a way that made sense for who she was. She was beautiful, funny, kind, generous. He just had to take this chance and let someone in. They both needed this, even he knew that, and yet it felt like he was considering stepping out onto the water. He had done this how many times in school and after? Fifty or maybe possibly a hundred if he was kind to himself and yet this felt different. It was far more important now than it had ever been those times. 

A lifetime ago he had felt this for someone else, but that was something Sirius had let slip through his fingers like grains of sand. Gone was that chance and yet here he had another one. It was as unexpected as anything had ever been. 

Sirius found himself wondering,  _ ‘Do I want to spend the rest of my life with her?’  _

That was an odd thought, kissing someone did not mean you would spend the rest of your life with them, nor was it professing your undying love for them. It was a kiss, nothing more nothing less, and, yet, it wasn’t. This was something that mattered and would not be able to be taken back. It was not a promise of forever, but it was a chance at it. 

Sirius reached out, untying Luna’s hair, and then kissed her, crashing their lips together. She was shocked, freezing as if she was made of stone and not a person of flesh and blood. But then it was like lightning had struck between them and she kissed him back. Her tongue invaded his mouth, and he allowed her in. His hand wrapped around her hip, his thumb rubbing against the bone. Luna pulled away gasping as she did so and laid her head against his chest. She held onto him as if he was something that meant the world to her. Sirius wanted to bury his nose in her hair, to breathe in the smell of her coconut shampoo, and just exist in this moment. The world could fall around them and he wouldn’t care about it. This was all that mattered, her and him and whatever it meant or might become. He was like a dog with a bone willing to take whatever scraps that he could get. 

“I wish you would have done that sooner,” Luna murmured, looking up at him now with wide blue eyes. She had freckles on the bridge of her nose that he had never noticed before. “But then again with how many nargles seemed to be affecting you, I am not shocked it did.”

“I am sorry that I am like some silly schoolboy who couldn’t seem to get up the courage,” Sirius said softly, running a thumb down Luna’s cheek like she was the most lovely thing he had ever seen. “But I do have one question: what's a nargle?”

She wiggled around as if she needed to move to think, but her statement didn’t help him that much, “A nargle is a nargle.” Her expression, however, was rather serious as if she meant every single word of it but then added, “They live in the hair of people who have suffered great pain and have lost people they loved.” Luna ran a hand down his chest sending shivers up Sirius’ back. 

Long ago he might have made a snarky statement to something like that, but now he didn’t too happy in the moment too. It is better to be kind than to make someone feel horrible about their way of coping. The world was a nasty place and sometimes you had to do your very best to survive. This it seemed was Luna’s way of doing just that and if anyone had anything unkind to say about it? They would have to deal with him.

“Okay,” he replied. “But why didn’t you kiss me first?”

“Because, silly, I was waiting for you to be ready. Now, do you want dessert for dinner? My mum always said one of the best things anyone could do was have it first, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, but I never got to have it…” He found himself choking out the last part, an ebbing echoey pain that settled in his chest, “Remus was a stickler for the rules.”

“You are allowed to miss him and love me, Sirius,” Luna said solemnly. “A heart has enough space for many people; even one’s you are no longer with. Now let’s have some pie. I think this one was from Neville and Hannah, doesn’t it look nice?” 

Luna spoke from experience, but it wasn’t Sirius’ place to ask about it. James used to eat dessert first. Cakes and pies were always loaded onto his plate during the holidays. Regulus, his little brother tried to do the same growing up, but their parents never would allow such a thing. But one of the benefits of being an adult was that you could have pie for dinner and kiss the woman who made you feel alive again. Love was like wildflowers; sometimes you just had to let it grow and bloom. 


End file.
